Get Double-dipping Retiree/rehirees Off Payroll

Ploy Flunks `Smell Test'

May 21, 1996

Leave it to the bureaucrats of Florida to come up with a profitable new variation on the old retirement theme of "30 years and out."The modern get-rich-quick plan might well be labeled "30 days and right back in!''

Under a little-known state law which took effect in 1991, long-time public employees now enjoy the right to, in effect, have their retirement cake and eat it, too. Here's how it works:

State and local government employees who have put in 30 years on the job are eligible to "retire" from their positions, stipulate they will not begin collecting pension benefits for one year, then take a 30-day vacation before going back to the very same desk they left. Some are even entitled to cash in accrued sick leave and vacation benefits worth thousands of dollars.

Usually, the retiree-rehiree returns at a lower salary than he/she left, but when the pension package kicks in, his/her paycheck improves dramatically. For example, Jim Barry, environmental director for Palm Beach County's Environmental Resources Management's coastal and wetlands division, plans to "retire" soon from his $63,795 job. After a month off, he'll return to the same position for about 10 percent less. But a year from now, when his pension starts, his annual compensation will balloon to $88,037.

County officials defend the practice as being cost-effective for the taxpayers. When the retirees return, they are considered "new" employees entitled to fewer sick days, vacation time and other benefits than veterans receive. They also agree to accept a lower pension and if they leave the job before putting in 10 more years, they would forfeit their right to a second pension.

The mind reels at the not-too-far-fetched notion of a graybearded bureaucrat who began his career in his teens still holding down a public job in his early 60s while collecting a regular salary plus two pensions!

County Commissioner Mary McCarty accurately described the situation as failing to pass the "smell test."Commissioner Ken Foster, a man who has had some experience with the practice of collecting two paychecks at once, also detected a fishy aspect to the deal.

Retirement, after all, is supposed to bring an end to a career, not to prolong it. It is intended to make room for talented middle managers to move up and to create entry-level opportunities for younger workers. It is not meant to clog up an organization with overpaid roadblocks, yet that is exactly what this misguided policy does.

"Regardless of whether or not it's the law, it is double-dipping and the law is wrong and needs to be changed," McCarty said.

Now there's a motion to which her fellow commissioners should be eager to add their enthusiastic - if you'll pardon the expression - second.